


Another Night Where the World is on Fire

by DustySoul



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Invasion, Gen, Hell's Kitchen is on fire again, Triage Center, Urban Disaster Zone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 17:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4573317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it an alien invasion? Another mob trist? Find out what’s blowing up the city next time on the nine o’clock news! Karen can’t help but laugh at her stupid little joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Night Where the World is on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on the DD kinkmeme: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=7550110#cmt7550110

There’s a fire. Several fires. The smoke lingers with the dust. It’s in the air. It chokes her lungs.

 _Is it an alien invasion? Another mob trist? Find out what’s blowing up the city next time on the nine o’clock news!_ Karen can’t help but laugh at her stupid little joke. Her heart pounds.

They’re running in the street. And there are other people running past her. Everyone is trying to escape, to flee, to find a place with light again, where the clouds of dust have thinned.

 She trips over a pile of rubble. Foggy hauls her up by her arm pits. She can’t stop laughing.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” He hollers.

Her ears are ringing. She realizes she’s not laughing. She’s crying. All she can do is nod.

She and Foggy are maybe five blocks away from the first explosions now. The people around them, have stopped running. This block has light. A store front is on fire. Just a little bit. It’s enough to see by. The people mingle along the street instead, checking themselves over for injuries, seeing if they have any cell reception. One woman tunes an emergency radio.

Karen can feel her adrenaline wearing off. Her knees sting. She can feel blood running down her legs.

“Foggy, are you hurt?” She asks, images of the last night the world was on fire flashing behind her eyes. She pushes back his suit to check the spot were he’d been injured last time.

Foggy quickly assesses himself, head to toe, for any injuries. “I’m fine.” He says, and shrugs.

He doesn’t look fine. He’s covered in dust and small chunks of  concrete cling to his long hair.

She starts pulling it out.

“I’m fine.” He assures her again.

“You’re a mess.” She says, her voice cracks.

“So are you!”

She’s laughing again, just a little bit. And then she’s crying. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.” She says, sitting down.

“Karen?”

She waves him off, “Just- Just- Just-” She can’t stop crying.

Another woman joins them in a rush. She drops the canvas bag she’d been carrying in front of Karen.

“Are you alright?” She asks.

And now Karen’s mortified. Because here’s this _stranger_ worrying over her - over her stupid spectacle. And it’s _nothing._ And it’s so stupid to even feel this way in the first place. She’s covered in dust and maybe someone’s _blood_ the building she’d been in had been _blown up._ It’s perfectly understandable that she’d be in hysterics.

“I’m fine.” She squeaks.

“I’m going to clean up your knees anyway, okay? Are you allergic to latex?”

Karen sniffs, “Mmm, No, I’m not.”

The woman starts by pouring a bottle of something over Karen’s knees. Most of the gravel and dust wash down her legs. And now that she can see her skin clear of the dust… she can see how bad it really is. It’s like she doesn’t have any skin on her knees. Well… it’s not ‘like’ that… She just… doesn’t have any skin on her knees. Blood just pools in the missing space where skin should be before it starts running down her legs again.

The woman keeps flushing the wound. It burns. When the blood’s mostly gone, Karen can see that what ever is underneath it is white. It makes her feel a little sick. 

When the woman can’t get all the gravel out she grabs a pair of tweezers, runs an alcohol swap over them, and starts picking out the chunks that are really stuck there.

Karen whimpers.

“You’re going to be just fine.” The woman rubs an ointment on and all around the abrasion. She slaps a gauze pad over the mess. It turns red almost immediately and so she plops another on top of it. She then tapes the whole thing down. Very throughly.

“Best if you take it easy for the next little bit, okay? If you move around to much this thing’s going to come off. Now, can I see your hands?” 

She repeats her treatment, but this time to cover the wounds, she has Karen put on a pair of her plastic gloves.

“You knew to keep them clean, keep the dust from getting in them.”

“Thanks.” Karen says, a little weakly.

“No problem.” She glances around the street. Pulling her gloves off and throwing them next to Karen, she stands.  She’s wearing another pair underneath the first.

“Do you see anyone else who needs help?” She asks Foggy.

Foggy glances around, then shakes his head.

The street they’d stopped on had mostly emptied out.

She nods, “That’s good, let’s go.” And offers Karen a hand up.

They move on, the woman stopping next to everyone stopped or on the ground, seeing if they need help.

“I don’t know where to go.” One says, and it seems the only thing incapacitating him is a crushing sensation of helplessness.

“No one does.” Claire says, “I’ll help you stand, let’s follow the crowd.”

“Like lemmings.”

“Come on, we have to go find the perimeter. EMTs. Police. A triage.”

She helps the man up. They have to part ways when he won’t follow.

 

They walk on. Occasionally the ground shakes and they can hear explosions in the distance.

 

“Do you hear that?” Foggy asks, after another several blocks of walking. Karen wonders if they’re even in Hell’s Kitchen any more.

“Sirens?” The woman guesses.

“I think so.”

They don’t pick up the pace, because Karen probably can’t and she’s in the lead.

 

“Oof.” A woman as pushed something against Karen’s chest. She grabs it instinctually. It hurts her hands and the dried blood cracks against the inside of the latex glove.

“Here, puppy, take.” The woman turns around and lifts another from the smashed store front. She gives this one to Foggy. He doesn’t hold out his arms. “ **Take**.”

Foggy takes the puppy.

“You’re strong, take two.” She gives him another.

“What are you doing?” The woman who’d patched up Karen asks.

“Evacuating this pet store.” She’s, trying to hand the other woman a puppy as well.

“I can’t take one. I need my arms free to help people.”

“Are you an EMT?”

“Something like that.”

The woman squints at her.

“We need to get going.” Foggy tells her. “There’s a triage just a head.”

The woman looks back to the last of the baby animal’s she’s rounded up. She walks into the store, careful over the crushed glass, and comes back with a big basket. She fills it with the rest of the animals, as well as a couple toys and handfuls of food. She and trades the basket for Foggy’s two puppies.

“Let’s go.” She says.

And their mix-matched group is off again.

 

They make it to the triage.

“Are any of you hurt?” Someone in a uniform asks them.

“No.” They all respond, except Karen who says, “Only a little.”

The uniform puts a green mark across each of their foreheads and then sends them off to the subway.

It’s a very, very crowded. Karen can’t even start to estimate how many people there are. Almost ll of them are sitting in a pattern dictated by duck tape on the floor. A few stragglers walk the aisle or drink at the drinking fountains. They take a seat.

“Triage.” Sighs the medical woman.. “We’re going to be here a while.” She tells the group. “Might even be a couple days.”

They sit in a circle, corralling the puppies and kittens in the center.

“Good job with the pet rescue.” Foggy tells the author woman.

She beams, “Well, I couldn’t just _leave_ these little guys? Could I? Could I?” She coos the last bit to a sleepy golden retriever who’s ears she’s playing with.

“So,” Karen says, “What are your names?”

“Claire.” Says the maybe nurse woman.

“Darcy.”

“Karen.”

“Foggy.”

“So um, are you an EMT?” Karen asks Claire.

“No, ER nurse.”

“Ah.”

“You came very prepared for a catastrophe, though.” Foggy observes.

Claire just nods and shrugs, “Comes with the territory, I guess.”

“So, what do you think it is?Alien invasion or is this the new Fisk?” 

“Alien invasion.” Darcy says, confidently, “I know it’s SHIELD related, so it’s an alien invasion. Or something.”

Everyone stares at her.

“What?”

“How do you know it’s SHIELD related?”

“Because Jane was asked to fly to New York to consult on something. By SHIELD. They’d only invite her if it had to do with space science. And space science means aliens. Or, you know, one of the other brains like, created a dragon. Or a dinosaur. More likely a dinosaur. Like Jurassic Park. But my money’s still on aliens.”

There’s a long silence.

Karen finally says, “Jane…?”

“Foster.”

“So then you’re… Darcy _Lewis_?”

“The one and only. I tased Thor and everything.” She seems extremely pleased to be recognized.

“You _what_?”

“Tased the God of Thunder. He was very impressed with my tiny midgardian weapon.”

Foggy and Karen share a look.

Claire looks very tired. One of the puppies is bitting her fingers and she hasn’t reacted.

“That’s…” Foggy says.

“Awesome?” Darcy Supplies, “It’s _totally_ awesome.”

“Should we call Matt?”

“Phone service isn’t likely to work.” Supplies Claire.

Karen pulls out here cell phone anyway. She puts it on speaker phone and they all listen to the beeps as it does’t connect.

“I hope he’s alright…” She says.

“Who?”

“Our friend.”

“He’s kind of my boss.”

“I know what a ‘kind of my boss’ is like.” Darcy nods sagely.

“Can we sleep?” Karen asks, Claire. More for Claire’s benefit than her own.

“Probably a fine idea.” She lies down, positioning her canvas bag like a pillow. “Wake me up if someone starts bleeding or something.” The puppy that had been bitting her fingers clambers on top of her stomach and starts yapping.

Foggy lifts it off and sets it back in the circle.

“Just make sure they don’t escape.” Claire says. She falls asleep within a few minutes.

“Pretty badass.” Darcy says, approvingly.

Karen lies down also.

“So, you sleepy?” Darcy asks Foggy.

Foggy shakes his head.

“It’s going to get _really_ boring. Probably. We should play a game.”

“What game?”

“20 questions. I spy.” Darcy shrugs. “Oh! There’s Contact! Oh, wait, that requires someone else be awake. Never mind.”

“Okay.”

 

About an hour later, Darcy has spied fifteen different red back packs and Foggy found the precise wall tile Darcy meant (three up from the arch way over there and five to the left). Darcy makes a face and says, “I spy… something brown and icky.”

 She shakes Claire awake. “Claire, we need your box of gloves. The puppies pooped.”

 

About two and half hours later, more uniform people come around passing out water bottles, fruits, and granola bars. Darcy gets one of them to come back with a garbage bag for the make shift doggie bags.

They don’t eat until Darcy (with gloves) has put all the turds-in-a-glove in the bag and everyone has very throughly sanitized their hands and the floor arounds where the puppies are cuddle puddled.

“If you’re still hungry,” Claire says, “I do have more granola bars. And honey.”

“Why honey?”

“Low blood sugar. If someone can’t eat to get their blood sugar up, you can rub a bit of it on their gums and it will get absorbed that way.”

“Cool.” Darcy reaches out for another granola bar from Claire, “I swear, you’re like, a superhero or something.”

“I’m really not.”

 

“So what do you guys do?” Darcy asks Jane and Foggy eventually.

“I’m a lawyer.”

“And I’m his law firm’s secretary.”

“Cool.”

Karen snorts, she can tell Darcy’s actually rather bored by the news. “We can’t all corral super guinness and demigods.”

“I bet your day to day life is more fun though. Even if it seems kinda drab.”

“I think I win the most exciting day job.” Claire says.

“I don’t disagree.”

 

Darcy looses track of time when her phone dies. So she doesn’t know how long they’ve been huddled in the underground tunnel before there’s an announcement that the street and the rails clear and can start getting people out of the triage center.

They’ve chatted and chatted until talking was boring. Then they played several rounds of contact and twenty questions once Foggy and Darcy had taken their turn to nap. Neither of them wanted in on her and Foggy’s absolutely brutal games of “I spy”.

“We should trade contact info.” Darcy suggests.

Karen hums, “But you don’t live in New York, do you?”

“I visit often enough when Jane consults.” Darcy shrugs. “I need friends in the area.”

“I’m not surprised your the type to make friends at a triage center.”

“Silver lining.”

Claire smiles. “Sure thing.” She writes out her number three times on a note pad from The Great Canvas Bag and passes it out.

Karen and Foggy do the same.

“We should total meet up for drinks.” Darcy’s whole face lights up, “Like, as soon as they let us out of here. We go to someplace where the distractions not that bad, and find a bar. I could use a glass of wine.”

“What about the puppies?”

Darcy looks around and the sleeping fur balls. “Oh, yeah.” She hrumphs. “The Avengers never have to deal with rescue puppies during their after parties.

This makes everyone laugh.

“I’m sure we can take them with us to the bar, or pass them out to people here.”

“Great idea.”

 

Except its _hours_ before they’re section is allowed to depart.

And, at that point, it’s about noon.

They go out drinking anyway.

“My sleep schedule is so messed up.” Karen pouts.

Claire shrugs.

“New York is so messed up.” Darcy says, much more energetically. Her sleep schedule being messed up may be making her a bit manic.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or follow me on tumblr at dusty-soul.tumblr.com


End file.
